SPEC debuts SPECviewperf 11

SPEC announced the launch of the SPECviewperf 11 graphics benchmarking software:

SPEC’s Graphics Performance Characterization (SPECgpc) project group has released SPECviewperf 11, a major new version of its graphics benchmarking software that includes a new GUI and fully updated viewsets based on traces from professional applications.

“It delivers a much better user experience and the major workload updates better align graphics performance results with what users experience in their day-to-day work with professional applications.”

SPECgpc members involved in the development of SPECviewperf 11 include AMD, Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Intel, and NVIDIA.

New GUI, updated viewsets
“This is one of the most significant releases of SPECviewperf in recent years,” says Ian Williams, SPECgpc chair. “It delivers a much better user experience and the major workload updates better align graphics performance results with what users experience in their day-to-day work with professional applications.”

The new SPECviewperf 11 GUI makes it easier for novice or infrequent users to set up multiple benchmark runs, access results, and receive help for common issues. Identical scripting is used for both Windows and Linux environments, helping ensure consistent results across different operating systems.

Test files in SPECviewperf 11, called viewsets, are traced from newer versions of eight different graphics-intensive applications and incorporate advanced OpenGL functionality such as shaders and vertex buffer objects (VBOs). The new viewsets also contain larger models – some with more than 60 million vertices – to exercise the latest generation of graphics cards and to reflect current user workloads.

SPECviewperf 11 supports both 32- and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 7, Vista and XP, as well as popular Linux distributions.

Available now
More information and initial results from SPECgpc members are available on the SPEC web site. SPECviewperf 11 and its accompanying viewsets – ranging from 955MB to more than 1.5GB in size – can be purchased on DVD at the website for $50 or downloaded for free.